A Visitor's Guide to Gleanhold: The City of 9 Sovereignties

The Vyscarian Empire, a conglomerate empire consisting of 9 Kingdoms, or 9 Sovereignties, each ruled by 9 Lords under one monarch per Sovereignty. Approximately 3.5 thousand miles in size, it is the first empire in all of Runfel, or possibly all of Umbria, to unite all sovereignties across half a continent to form one unified people under one Phoenix Banner.

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Gleanhold is the capital city of Vyscaria, its founding settlement, and by far the most tumultuous and ever-changing city in the empire. While other Sovereignties have locally governed lands, provinces, and towns, spanning miles on end ruled by various lords with a central city housing the Soveriengty's monarch, Gleanhold belongs to itself as the bridge between all sovereignties, where the High Queen of Vyscaria currently dwells. Each Sovereign Monarch has an estate within Gleanhold, people from each Sovereignty pool into this 15-mile wide metropolis, and each Sovereignty is therefore represented. Crowned the Ancestral Origin, the Home of an Idea, Gleanhold bears the presence of all Dragonmarked Houses, estates belonging to Lords & Ladies from each sovereign, manors of the most influential nobility in all the empire, and it lies as the center of continental wealth and trade.
Ruling an empire like Vyscaria is no easy feat, and juggling the needs and problems of 9 Sovereignties across a continent requires the strongest of wills, the greatest of patience, and the best temperament. Because of this, Vyscaria is famously known, above all else, as the Empire of Adventurers. Serving adventurers far and wide as an official contract profession, Vyscaria gives gratitude toward any brave citizen with initiative who aims to aid in helping out across this colossal empire.
Within this 3-Ringed City of 9 Sovereignties lies 6 Primary Districts, all zoned with subdivisions for each. This guide introduces you, adventurer, to the city of Gleanhold, its infrastructural and cultural marvel, and it's features, troubles, and all the subdistricts in between.

1. Market Street

First and foremost, we must introduce Market Street, the 40-foot wide, 7-mile long silk road of trade and commerce for all peoples. People from afar can rent a spot along this road to sell goods and wares, odds and ends, trinkets and wonders, for all to see and all to buy. Citizens of Gleanhold receive a Citizen's Trust, granting them a 20% reduction on renting space with a 4-year track to Tenure as a shopkeeper. When a citizen sets up this shop with this Trust, the Grand House of Commerce opens up a bank account for the shopkeeper to store money and save up, allowing the treasury to automatically withdraw due taxes and keep the income safe. If the shop remains successful for up to 4 years, the Grand House of Commerce grants Tenure to the market street shopkeeper, investing in their shop as a success and offering them a selection of plots to choose from with a grant to set up their shop. This helps up-and-starting businesses become permanent while maintaining property taxes for the state. Nonprofit acts and charity are rewarded with fixed tax deductions per degree of the charity since the owner would be cycling money they earn back to the community which is what taxes would normally accomplish.

2. Districts of the Outer Ring

The Districts of the Outer Ring consist of 4 Primary Districts: the Agricultural District, the Industrial District, Labor District, and the Port District. Here we will break down the functionality of each district in the outer ring as well as cover the subdivisions of each district.

3. The Agricultural District

The Agricultural District's gate faces the countryside. In the agricultural district, which stretches out along the Countryside, much of the city's production of needs are produced here. Meat, cotton, barley, wine, ale, mead, honey, bread, fruit, vegetables, medicine, herbalistic remedies, animal domestication, farmer's markets, livestock trade and auctions, mount training, and various other businesses, trades, and apprenticeships that fall under the umbrella of the Agricultural Industry. People who dwell here typically work in one of these professions. When citizens living in the agricultural district reach adulthood in Gleanhold, they are immediately streamlined into vocational training for the work that is done there unless they otherwise apply to professions outside the district. Spanning 2.5 miles wide and 4 miles in length, this district houses around 4.7 thousand residents and 500 farmers while providing trade schools, agricultural processors, public open space, and opportunities to launch yourself into the agricultural trade.
Subdistrict of Processing: This subdistrict of the Agricultural District (AD) is dedicated to working in processing plants for wheat, grains, brewing, biofuel production, and various other artificial modifications of agriculture for the purpose of distribution.
Subdistrict of Handling: This subdistrict is littered with fields, tracks, and training grounds for mounts. This place is littered with horseshoe production, mount breeding, and raising, barding armory, saddle making, leatherworking, animal handling, mount training. House Sivis, the Dragonmarked House of Handling, holds their estate in this subdistrict, overseeing all of the Agricultural District with their estate branch in Gleanhold.

Subdistrict of Goods: This subdistrict is where much of the food production is shipped to and moved to. It lies adjacent to the Subdistrict of Distribution in the Labor District. Here Gleanhold citizens travel for the majority of food groceries and trade. This subdistrict is also home to Bolbain's Brew, an outdoor courtyard tavern and cafe with a central garden.

4. Labor District

The Labor District is home to the majority of production and supply trades and disciplines that lie outside the realms of industrial processes. Woodcarving, appliances, sewage treatment, management, artisan trades such as cooking, smithing, tinkering, mirror-making, hygiene production, masonry, construction, road work, infrastructural repairs and analysis, transportation, fabric production, and tailoring. The residents of the Labor District are a hardy stalk who are all skilled in a specific discipline; everyone here is meant to have a role. "No Idle Hands" is the district's motto. Overseen by House Cannith, every citizen that reaches adulthood assembles at the Oxin Academy to be assessed by masters of their trades, who hand-select apprentices to join the craft and trade. Cannith has imposed safety codes of business across the entire district and enforces each business to have a designated number of paid leave days to account for injuries or illnesses. Cannith directly employs a guild of house nurses to care for children while parents are away at work, employing more young men and women while optimizing production.
Subdistrict of Making: This subdistrict is home to Cannith's Oxin Academy, where masters of trades train new apprentices. Representatives overseeing the district meet to make decisions and enact policy programs there, too. This subdistrict is the home of artisan tool crafts: Masonry, Cobbleworking, Tool Smithing & Production, Carpentry, and Tinkering.

Subdistrict of Hospitality: This subdistrict focuses on occupations around servitude and amenities: servantry, shoe-shining, shoe-making, cooking, glassblowing, bottle-making, mirror-making, brothel training, barkeeping, bartending, innkeeping, and squiring. Criminals sentenced with enlisted service will be transported here for training to be able to serve throughout the duration of their sentence. This district is home to the famous Crystal Waters Bathhouse & Brothel and the Hearthforge Buffet Diner.
Subdistrict of Maitenance: This subdistrict consists of all the infrastructural work; it facilitates the most dangerous of professions in the Labor District: sewage maintenance, treatment, and water recycling; construction and demolition, hard labor, road reparation, damage assessment, hazard response, etc. The Labor Hall of Penance dwells here, where those with criminal sentences of Hard Labor are transported to. It also holds Fort Greywall, one of the various prisons maintained by the Vyscarian Magistrates. This place is also home to Orc Town and Dragonborn Alley.
Subdistrict of Service:

This subdistrict raises and trains the warriors of Gleanhold. Overseen by House Deneith, this part of the labor district is where members of the Vyscarian Guard, the City Watch, and the Vyscarian Military are trained. If you wake up early enough in the morning, you can catch recruits running the traditional 7-Mile Circuit as the sun rises. Fort Deneith dwells on this part of the Labor District, overseeing the entirety of the district with overwatch towers along the Bay Wall. Sentinel Wall towers over Navytown Habor, which is the delta where the Septim River feeds out to the Ruby Sea, but House Lyrandar oversees that subdistrict of the Port District.

5. Port District

The Port District manages all things marine and coastal. House Lyrandar oversees this district and all its subdivision. Sea travel, trading, fishing, fisheries, canneries, dock work, port management, marine preservation, coastal planning, navy deployment/funding, and Coast Guard watch.
It is also home to the nefarious Alley Square, a failed housing plan that clumped hundreds upon hundreds of residents together when an early housing crisis arose in 1416.

It resulted in a miniature town formed from alleyways, a verticle town if you will, sprouting from the cobble streets and creating the groundwork for criminal assemblage from that crisis. You will find the City Watch has more patrols in this area, and the Red Light District lights up at night for any who have more of a devious taste for life.

Harborside: This is where the Titan Gate Harbor lies, a port that stretches miles long all the way to Navytown, guarded by sea nets, and towering bay walls. Here you will find every sailor you can find, fish yields being loaded up dock ramps, people bustling about. It's home to the rowdy Saltwood Tavern which serves the best fish & chips, fried cod, clam chowder, and calamari you'll get in Gleanhold.

Fish City: This exists adjacent to and behind Harborside, facilitating most of the residents of the district and more in-land marine labor. Dotted with numerous fisheries and canneries, this subdistrict has an Out of Water program to provide early apprenticeships for children and teens, training them for the high seas, fishing, dock work, and fishery work. Lyrandar Representatives select members within this apprenticeship that show promise for the marine sciences, and put them to work in reef stewardships, oceanography, sea exploration, and the Mariner Corp if they have the aptitude.

Navytown: This town rides up against the Bay Wall in the back of Fort Deneith in the Subdistrict of Service, training and managing the largest Navy Port in Gleanhold. The Septim Delta is sectioned off for Oceanography, Marine Research, Sea Exploration, Navy Exercises, Warship construction, and Coast Guard headquarters. 30 years ago, the Mariners were added as a new branch of the Coast Guard Search and Rescue Team, jumpstarted right here in Navy Town and now stationed from the Ruby Sea shores to Sentinel Bay. You will also find the Lyrandar Sanctuary for Irreleasable Marine Life (LSIML) in this subdistrict as well, where citizens can pay to see maintained shelters, acres, and displays of marine life from the Ruby Sea in regulated habitats stationed in the Septim Delta.

Navy Town allows for quick Naval response on the North Bay while pursuing military naval training and advances in marine sagecraft in a well-fortified Delta.

6. Industrial District

The Industrial District is by far the least scenic part of Gleanhold, and the most impoverished. Those who are born here typically are funneled into industrial jobs of mass production and processes. The grittiest of Gleanhold's citizens dwell here, but they truly make the backbone of the economy. The jobs provided in this district are baseline work that anyone can apply to, and each factory or industry presence in this district employs hundreds of residents. There is never a shortage of jobs and anyone can start, from the most basic of labor at 3 cp an hour to advanced industrial services 15 gp a day. The work that goes on here is crucial to Vyscarian production chains that help build the backbone of society and the market: mineral processing, metalwork, metalsmithing, smelting, timber processing, paper production, oil, glass production, and overall base supplies that get implemented in every sect of industry and society within Gleanhold. Groups of enterprise and business empires primarily oversee this district under the patronage of nobility. This district is divided into five subdistricts, which will receive brief descriptions below.
Subdistrict of Smelting: This subdistrict comprises industries of metalcraft, ore smelting, and various forms of metal products. Glass is also generated here, which supplies glassblowing crafts in the Labor District.

Subdistrict of Energy: This subdistrict funnels much of the waste and excess crops into biofuel and oils, steam generation, and chemical and nitrate powder production. Various domains of alchemical processes also take place here. The products here further the applications of arcane machinery for artificery. However, much of the industry has been outsourced to Hightower City from Gleanhold, leaving this district with scarce job opportunities and the largest impoverished population in Gleanhold. Plans to revamp this subdistrict since the business outsourcing has failed for the most part, the most successful initiatives being mass production of group homes, the introduction of panel packs created by House Cannith, employing almost 2000 people into panel generation, and military production chains that employ around 4000 residents in making materials and supplies used for homeland defense and military industry. Poverty has decreased by 24% over the last 160 years since the outsourcing, but it is still largely unmanageable, a development area Queen Guenivere has personally taken interest in. Time will tell how this subdistrict unfolds in the future, which is to be surely discussed in the next Conference of Change.

Subdistrict of Infrastructure: Similar to the Labor District's subdistrict of maintenance, this industrial complex zone focuses on the processing of wood, conversion into beams, papyrus and parchment production, cobblestone mixing, brick production, stone mortaring, and generating supplies for construction work such as pulleys, wagons, wheel barrels, support beams, pillar stones, etc. Workers that exceed in these fields are promoted to apprenticeships in the Labor District, but this subdistrict employs the largest concentration of new workers with no background experience into the fold.

Black Alley: This subdistrict is at large an abandoned district. During the Wukan War, Yuan-Ti Pureblood populations infested this place at large, masked as refugees from the plains before the empire knew what they were up against. The Purebloods sabotaged so much business that it drove it out and crippled production to address the upcoming Wukan War. When the War broke out, this place was largely destroyed in domestic warfare. Once reclaimed, a prison was built for the captured Yuan-Ti. Among the captured was a dark wizard, who opened a rift of souls in the prison, twisting the minds of those inside and spreading an Insanity Plague throughout the district. Since the War concluded, the Church of Lathander has managed to purify the entire district, but it lost the Archbishop in the process as well as 32 Clerics of Lathander and 21 Knights of the Silver Flame. For the time being, this place is referred to as Black Alley by the locals, who keep away from its crumbling infrastructure and dark past.
Bordertown: Near the northwest wall of the Industrial District lies Bordertown, referred to as the "City of 7 Bloods" by the surrounding (largely human) locals. Inside this city is a largely residential pool of remarkably inhuman residents, including Goblins, Kobolds, Domesticated Orcs, Dragonborn, Goliaths, Tieflings, and half breeds. The most diverse food services are provided here along with a range of cultural centers, such as the Orc Pits, Kobold Coves, Dragonfolk Dens, Horned Havens, and many more.

7. Residential District of the Middle Ring

The Middle Ring contains the majority of Gleanhold's population, housing over 32 thousand people. While there are subdistricts of this ring, it is important to note that each subdistrict is a subdistrict of the Residential District that makes up the Middle Ring. Thus, everything is meant to house the people of Gleanhold, with specific emphasis on various aspects of life.

Subdistrict of Stories:

This subdistrict of the stories is by far the most lucrative and colorful area of the Residential District. Right past the district gate on market street, this subdistrict opens up with shops, traders, far travelers, etc. The widest array of quest shops, bounty boards, pubs, local theaters, taverns, and brothels litter the neighborhoods of the residents who dwell here. Enjoy Vyscarian food and hospitality, revel in the stories of travelers from all over Runfel, and dance in the court squares with the locals.
The Subdistrict of Gratitude: This subdistrict is dedicated to housing the elderly and the retiring population of the city. Dedicating an entire part of the city to those who have dedicated their lives to the Empire with the work they have done, veterans and elders get to rest without and retire from the busy city life. Tour the community gardens, visit your grandparents, play chess with veterans of the Wukan War, and bask under the sun among the Park of Honor.
Partytown: Aptly named. This area is more of the people's corner, where local business is primed for festivities. Theaters, clubs, casinos, and event squares with wide-open cobblestone streets alight with lanterns, banners, flags, and ornaments. Join in on the fun!

8. Pearl District

The Scholar's Subdistrict: This subdistrict is home to the renowned House Sivis, the Dragonmarked House of Scribes, who publish all Public Service Announcement and official notices and bounties for the public to see. They founded Oracle University of Sagecraft & Wizardry, and engage in direct business with The Citadel, a private and secluded keep containing the next generations of wizards and spellcasters. The Citadel shares land with House Vadalis, who runs their Magizoology program. House Orien, the Dragonmarked House of Passage, also shares prominent influence in this subdistrict with a centralized courier system in the city of Gleanhold. This place houses the largest concentration of scholars and sages the city has to offer. This subdistrict is also home to the high-renowned and revered Oracle University of Sagecraft & Wizardry.

Subdistrict of Enterprise This subdistrict houses much of the nobility within Gleanhold. Only the wealthiest and most influential nobles dwell here, which consist of industry leaders, enterprise owners, keystone distributors, and affluent politicians.

Subdistrict of Law: This subdistrict holds the headquarters of the Magist Order of Augurs & Abjurists, the Inquisitor Offices, the High Court of Justice, the Tribunal of Council, the Phoenix Hearth Hall of Heroes, the Redwing Ranger Academy, and the Gleaming Palace at the Center of the Pearl District.

Subdistrict of Leisure: This subdistrict houses the rest of the most affluent residents of Vyscaria, providing wide open walkways, streamlined transit paths, the Park of Princes, and Gardens of Bliss.

9. Gleaming Palace

This place is home to the 732nd High Queen of Vyscaria, Guenivere Crystalloche, her palace staff, the Royal Guard, the Sovereign Senate, and the Tribunal of Council. This stunning palace lies at the heart of the city, an infrastructural marvel to be seen.